This was an article from today's New York Post:

The party is definitely over for PartyPoker.com, the No. 1 Web site for poker players.

The onetime darling of the online gambling crowd, its stock price soaring 50 percent in the weeks after its debut, PartyGaming PLC, the site's parent, fell 15 percent last week.

The drop was sparked by a London-based analyst who highlighted the growing issue of rakebacks — discounts offered by the site to other Web addresses as a bounty to lure bettors.

The rakebacks, as high as 25 percent and offered by dozens of affiliate sites, means that a growing number of bettors are paying wholesale to play at PartyPoker, the analyst said in a report last week.

"We believe [PartyPoker] is facing major issues with the affiliate program [rakebacks] and intensifying competition," the analyst, Julian Easthope, with UBS Investment Research, reported, cutting his 12-month target price to 100 pence from 175 pence.

The stepped-up competition can be seen with one affiliate partner, Empire Online, which used to direct poker players to PartyPoker but now directs them to NoblePoker.com.

Noble, recently bought by Empire, offers to match players' initial investment, up to $700, giving players much less incentive to go directly to PartyPoker.

PartyPoker all but admitted the problem last month when it announced revenue growth over the summer was weaker than expected. Its shares are off 55 percent from its high.